Analysis of water volume change of the lakes and reservoirs in the Mississippi River basin using Landsat imagery and satellite altimetry

Abstract

In recent years, the demand for freshwater has been steadily increasing owing to population growth and economic expansion. Surface waters such as lakes and reservoirs function as a dominant factor in mankind's freshwater provision. Analysis of changes in their water storage is consequently vital for understanding of the global water cycle and water resources. However, the water volume changes in lakes or reservoirs cannot be measured directly from space, but can be inferred from lake areas and lake water levels. Lake area can be measured globally from space but lake water level is not easy to be obtained globally. Because the number of in situ stations is few, and in situ data are only accessible for some lakes with few measurement epochs, despite in situ stations can measure lake water level and provide high accuracy observations. Although the altimetry technique can generate the time series of the water level for the majority of lakes, they are not global coverage due to the distance between satellite tracks and the gap between different missions. Therefore, in situ data and satellite altimetry measurements of water levels of lakes and reservoirs are not always available. For example, there are only 22 lakes or reservoirs in this study covered by satellite altimetry or in situ stations out of 90 research cases in Mississippi River Basin. Then, in case of unavailable in situ data or altimetry measurements, this research proposes an alternative method to estimate the water level through Digital Elevation Model (DEM). Because satellite imagery offers global coverage and DEM is the global digital representation of the land surface elevation with respect to any reference datum, this study allows for the evaluation of global water volume changes by acquiring lake area data from space and lake height data from DEM. Therefore, the objective of this study is that changes in water volume in lakes or reservoirs can be successfully monitored even when in situ data and satellite altimetry measurements are not available for lakes or reservoirs. Hereby, we investigate 90 lakes and reservoirs in the Mississippi River Basin and develop an alternative remote sensing technique to monitor the water volume changes by combining the improved water mask with DEM. Meanwhile, we propose practical methods to detect the shoreline pixels of the water body from improved water mask. Given the assumption that all pixels in the shoreline should have the same height, four water level estimation models are developed, including water level estimation model based on statistical analysis, frequency maps, change pixels and pixel pair analysis. To this end, the study estimates the time series of lake height from water level estimation model and obtains the time series of lake surface area from HydroSat. Subsequently, this study builds the unique function between the lake water level and the lake surface area and then develops the function between the lake water volume change and the lake surface area. Finally, this study analyses the water volume changes of lakes and reservoirs in the Mississippi River Basin using this alternative remote sensing method. Four water level estimation models are proposed and evaluated. They are respectively based on statistical analysis, frequency maps, change pixels and pixel pair analysis. As a result of their actions, the first model based on statistical analysis, with an average correlation of 0.62 and an average RMSE of 0.91 meters, functions in the majority of situations and demonstrates excessive outlier removal in some cases. The second model based on frequency maps is more general than the first, with an average correlation of 0.66 and an average RMSE of 1.11 meters. The average correlation for the third model based on change pixels is 0.71, and the average RMSE is 0.99 meters. The resulting model based on pixel pair analysis obtains a mean correlation of 0.67 and a mean RMSE of 1.00 meters. Finally, these models behave differently in different seasons, so they exhibit distinct monthly behaviour. To conclude, the above validation results show that this alternative method can be used in different lakes and reservoirs in case of absence of water level observation data, and achieve to monitor the water volume changes during a long period.